First Glance:
Youkai vs. youkai battles take place in the cohabited human/youkai town of Sakurashinmachi on Thursdays in Yozakura Quartet. Adapted from the manga of the same name, the series revolves around a group of youkai teenagers that maintain order in their town by fighting against other youkai who threaten their peacefully coexistence with humans. In a small company led by Hiizumi Akina (Kaji Yuuki), the superhuman strength mayor Yarizakura Hime (Fukuen Misato), mind-reader Nanami Ao (Fujita Saki), and kotodama conjurer Isone Kotoha (Sawashiro Miyuki) maintain order in the town, but also perform the odd job here and there. While it’s easy to make the comparson to Rental Magica with Akina being the “somewhat unreliable yet key president character” akin to Itsuki Iba (much like Omni mentioned in his Fall Preview), I actually find that the similarities tend to end there. Granted the supernatural premise remains, but instead of an Astral magician dispatch service, we have an interesting setting in Sakurashinmachi where half the inhabitants are human and the other half are youkai. With that said, I liked Rental Magica quite a bit, so having a something along the same lines is appealing to me. My only complaint at the moment is that the first broadcast is in 4:3 instead of 16:9 when the series was clearly produced in widescreen, much like in To LOVE-Ru‘s case before.

On the topic of production, Yozakura Quartet’s animation was done by Nomad, the studio that brought us Rozen Maiden and sola, two series I enjoyed a fair bit. As such, I find that the visuals look good, but don’t particular stand out by any means. Matsuo Kou leads the production as the director, with the aforementioned Rozen Maiden and recent kurenai under his belt, which will hopefully translate into a well structured series. For a first episode though, the characters are what caught my eye the most, as there’s something about Hime’s personality and long flowing scarf that appeals to me. She’s rather serious for the most part, but has a goofy side that comes across well thanks to Fukuen Misato. (I guess even with health reasons, it would be dumb to turn down starring roles.) This is also one of the few series featuring Sawashiro Miyuki this season, so her playful yet somewhat psychotic portrayal of Kotoha is fun to watch as well. Music-wise, I really like the opening song and have been listening to it over and over again, but I admittedly haven’t heard anything from savage genius before. As for the opening sequence, it’s reminiscent of the funky style used in kurenai‘s OP, whereas the constantly changing color palettes of the ending sequence is something new to me. The ending song is performed by the usual “ROUND TABLE featuring Nino” duo, whose songs from Chobits and ARIA I absolutely loved, with “Nagareboshi” being no different.

Evidently though, there isn’t a whole lot else captivating my interest in what initially comes off as a generic looking series; therefore, I’m torn as to whether or not to follow it. It’s only slated for one season (something I tend to prefer lately) and has a strong support cast (see below), so I’m inclined to give it a couple more episodes before I decide. Thursdays is definitely not short on shows to watch though, with three more scheduled to premiere next week, so I’m going to have to juggle my priorities accordingly.

This show is made with the method of pre-scoring(recording voices before drawing pictures), just like other recent works by the directer Kou Matsuo, Red Garden and kurenai, and this time actually has some pretty good action sequences as a pre-scoring production. While pre-scoring is very good for drama-oriented anime, I guess it’s pretty hard to make action-oriented anime with that method.
Anyway, action-wise and drama-wise, this 1st episode looks pretty promising to me.

As for the shows which already have the 1st episode broadcasted so far, Yozakura, Akane-iro and Tora-Dora appear to be the ones I will stick(at least) for a while, although we have quite a few more shows to come out this month.

the mango was awesome. Kinda sad that my local Kinokuniya stocked only up to volume 3, and I still have yet to get my hand on the other volumes ;A;. and Divine, the scarf is essential to Hime’s life and her work as mayor. That’s all I can say at this time.

It depends on the series, as you might guess. It might help to be aware that a year has 52 weeks: if a series airs roughly one episode a week, then a 13 episode series would take up a quarter of the year while a 26 episode series would run for half a year.

It’s somewhat arbitrary on what exactly “one season” is. Longer series, like Eureka 7 and Gundam, might air 26 episodes and then take a break for about half a year before airing the remaining 26 episodes. With such a long break between halves of the series, it could count as a “first season” and “second season”, particularly with since long series like Gundam Wing and Blood+ had about 50-ish episodes run pretty much week-after-week without more a two week break at most. Try not to be surprised if recap episodes appear right around the episode 25-27 mark in those cases…

Interested to see how this series goes. Just recently looked at the manga, and it has a rather different feel from the first anime episode. The first 2 vols of the manga felt more like a study of odd characters in an overall odd town with some slightly dark edges. It was a rather fun and quirky manga, I found.

Hime (or rather Mayor!) most definitely does have her goofy side – especially around food. I am looking forward to see how they do her “tsun tsun dere tsun” song.

One I’ll be keeping an eye, if not just for the fact this is the director of Kurenai at work here.

“My only complaint at the moment is that the first broadcast is in 4:3 instead of 16:9 when the series was clearly produced in widescreen”

How can you tell? Does the broadcast give it away, or was it mentioned somewhere that it was produced in widescreen? I’m not trying to say that you’re wrong, I’m just curious as to how you deduced that, that’s all.

Gojiro88:
A completely valid question. I guess I should’ve been more clear about it. Much like in CLANNAD’s broadcast, the brief overlay message on the top right-hand corner indicating that there are subtitles (字幕) available is clearly cut off. You can verify this in the first few seconds of the OP video above.

I guess this show itself is a 4:3 aspect ratio production, just broadcasted with 16:9 Japanese Degital TV format.

A few things I’ve noticed.
This town is a junction of this world and the other world(world of the dead?). Seven gigantic sakura trees probably has something to do with that. The town seems to be officially considered as a place for youkais, and highly likely given a kind of extra-territorial rights by the (human’s)government.
Hime “the Mayor” is vertually a sheriff of the town. In order to keep her town safe, she seeks help from a group of social workers. Akina is their leader. He is not a youkai but a human, although he has supernatural power to banish youkais to the other world. Ao is a mind-reader, as a youkai named Satori. Kotoha uses kotodama, which means she can materialize things she says as a word. Kyousuke is Hime’s right hand man or a butler. Although he is not a member of “the quartet”, he joins party to assist Hime.

Seems interesting enough, I just hope I’ll stay interested till the end. Thursday is going to be a crazy day of anime marathon, it seems. Thank you divine for listing the seiyuu, which I think is the only deciding factor why I would continue to follow this show for a little while.

calde:
I’m fairly sure that TBS is simply broadcasting it in 4:3 when it’s actually produced in 16:9. As usual, BS-i will air the widescreen version, but unfortunately that doesn’t start until three weeks later.

Reasons:
1. Similar to Rental Magica, one of my most favorite show. ^_^
2. Kotodama just so cool and fun, not to mention her VA is the same as the one play Shinku in Rozen Maiden.
3. When kotodama went crazy with the machine gun, doesn’t that remind u of Fist of the North Star.